Jeannette Jones | Boston University (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeannette Jones

ch. 3 in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, released Fall 2015 Hearing is so... more ch. 3 in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, released Fall 2015

Hearing is something many musicians take for granted. Few hearing musicians stop to consider what it might mean to hear deafly. As hearing musicians increasingly become aware of the physiological experience of deaf bodies, hearing deafly is something that all types of bodies can do.

Using as case studies the creative works and performances of Deaf musicians, including Beethoven’s Nightmare and rappers Sean Forbes and Signmark, I challenge the hearing world to think about the alternative modes of hearing that a deaf musical experience offers, calling for critical reflection on how many of the current assumptions about music are connected to how people hear with their ears. Examining the musicians’ biographies, repertories, performance spaces, and audiences within a greater context of Deaf culture and history, I argue for a way of making and listening to music that is specifically Deaf, celebrating deafness in a way that situates the Deaf as a cultural minority within a hearing world. Musical practices that arise from this political identity create a Deaf musical culture that should encourage music scholars to acknowledge the linguistic differences and histories that are present in the performance and reception of Deaf music.

The prospect of deaf hearing is a seeming oxymoron borne out of not only the hearing world’s assu... more The prospect of deaf hearing is a seeming oxymoron borne out of not only the hearing world’s assumption that deafness wholly prevents sound perception, but also the Deaf world’s insistence that sound itself is irrelevant. Former president of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) George Veditz’s famous 1910 proclamation that deaf people are “first, last and for all time, the people of the eye” remains an imperative in contemporary Deaf culture, a view that often dismisses the relevance of deaf musical expression.

This paper negotiates these conflicting ideals by theorizing what I term “hearing deafly,” a multi-sensory, embodied understanding of sound grounded in a deaf perspective. I draw on interviews with members of the Deaf rock band Beethoven’s Nightmare. While a non-deaf person may conceive of the auditory process as dwelling in the ear and auditory nerve, for a deaf person it shifts to the environment of the body. The members of Beethoven’s Nightmare credit their hearing loss with affording a greater sensibility to the vibrations of their musical experiences. One member describes sensing sound through an integration of seeing and feeling, creating what he calls “a sense of vibe to my body.” In the context of hearing deafly, an awareness of embodied vibration allows these deaf musicians to be conscious of the interconnections between people and sounds. I argue that such a sense informs our understanding of how music and sound create a sense of shared presence between the musicking participants, deaf or hearing.

Decentering the ears from the hearing process draws attention to certain assumptions surrounding hearing and sound that are rooted in our culturally conditioned aural-normativity, that is, the idea that sound experiences are ear-centered. Similarly, the primacy of vision in Deaf culture risks overshadowing deaf multi-sensory engagements with sound. Reshaping the geography of sound in the bodily environment expands the boundaries of musical perception, opening our understanding of musical experience that blurs the binaries between deaf and hearing. Hearing deafly cuts across cultural-linguistic and audiological divisions to articulate an aspect of musical experience that is available to all bodies.

Recommendations for creating a visual presentation accessible for conference participants.

ch. 3 in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, released Fall 2015 Hearing is so... more ch. 3 in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, released Fall 2015

Hearing is something many musicians take for granted. Few hearing musicians stop to consider what it might mean to hear deafly. As hearing musicians increasingly become aware of the physiological experience of deaf bodies, hearing deafly is something that all types of bodies can do.

Using as case studies the creative works and performances of Deaf musicians, including Beethoven’s Nightmare and rappers Sean Forbes and Signmark, I challenge the hearing world to think about the alternative modes of hearing that a deaf musical experience offers, calling for critical reflection on how many of the current assumptions about music are connected to how people hear with their ears. Examining the musicians’ biographies, repertories, performance spaces, and audiences within a greater context of Deaf culture and history, I argue for a way of making and listening to music that is specifically Deaf, celebrating deafness in a way that situates the Deaf as a cultural minority within a hearing world. Musical practices that arise from this political identity create a Deaf musical culture that should encourage music scholars to acknowledge the linguistic differences and histories that are present in the performance and reception of Deaf music.

The prospect of deaf hearing is a seeming oxymoron borne out of not only the hearing world’s assu... more The prospect of deaf hearing is a seeming oxymoron borne out of not only the hearing world’s assumption that deafness wholly prevents sound perception, but also the Deaf world’s insistence that sound itself is irrelevant. Former president of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) George Veditz’s famous 1910 proclamation that deaf people are “first, last and for all time, the people of the eye” remains an imperative in contemporary Deaf culture, a view that often dismisses the relevance of deaf musical expression.

This paper negotiates these conflicting ideals by theorizing what I term “hearing deafly,” a multi-sensory, embodied understanding of sound grounded in a deaf perspective. I draw on interviews with members of the Deaf rock band Beethoven’s Nightmare. While a non-deaf person may conceive of the auditory process as dwelling in the ear and auditory nerve, for a deaf person it shifts to the environment of the body. The members of Beethoven’s Nightmare credit their hearing loss with affording a greater sensibility to the vibrations of their musical experiences. One member describes sensing sound through an integration of seeing and feeling, creating what he calls “a sense of vibe to my body.” In the context of hearing deafly, an awareness of embodied vibration allows these deaf musicians to be conscious of the interconnections between people and sounds. I argue that such a sense informs our understanding of how music and sound create a sense of shared presence between the musicking participants, deaf or hearing.

Decentering the ears from the hearing process draws attention to certain assumptions surrounding hearing and sound that are rooted in our culturally conditioned aural-normativity, that is, the idea that sound experiences are ear-centered. Similarly, the primacy of vision in Deaf culture risks overshadowing deaf multi-sensory engagements with sound. Reshaping the geography of sound in the bodily environment expands the boundaries of musical perception, opening our understanding of musical experience that blurs the binaries between deaf and hearing. Hearing deafly cuts across cultural-linguistic and audiological divisions to articulate an aspect of musical experience that is available to all bodies.

Recommendations for creating a visual presentation accessible for conference participants.